


you and me (that's my whole world)

by inhobbok



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: First Kiss, Fist Fights, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Skipping Class, Smoking, set somewhere between season 2 and season 3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-09-27 05:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20402125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inhobbok/pseuds/inhobbok
Summary: They lock themselves into a competition of sorts, seeing how far they can throw a rock into the air. It’s a stupid game to play, on the cusp of adulthood. Steve wonders if there are any fish in the lake. What are they thinking right now, as rocks rain down onto them?Steve voices this concern.Jonathan pauses with his arm behind his head, preparing for another throw. He looks at Steve and chuckles. “They’re just fish, Steve. I don’t think they’re thinking anything.” He throws the rock. It goes further than any of the others.





	1. Chapter 1

“Fuck off, Hargrove,” Steve spits, clambering to his feet.

Billy just smirks at him, as if Steve fell over his own feet rather than being pushed to the ground. Tommy passes the ball back to him and he catches it easily, like his hands are magnets and the ball is a hunk of iron. Steve can’t lie, he’s jealous of this skill, the ease of movement and comfort with the ball. Billy dribbles the ball from one hand to the other as he jogs down the court. The ball goes where he wants it. Basketball comes naturally to Billy. Steve? He has to work hard for it.

He’s been training his whole life. This doesn’t come easily. He’s not comfortable on the court, he’s concentrating. He can’t relax. This isn’t easy. This is the hardest thing in his life.

“Up, Harrington!” their coach yells from the sideline. “Come on, you’re needed under the ring. Faster, Harrington!”

Steve pumps his legs as he sprints across the court, trying to catch Billy. He leaps into the key and throws his arms up as Billy shoots.

The coach’s whistle blows. “Foul! Two shots, Hargrove.” 

Steve swears under is breath, running his hand through his sweaty hair. Billy steps up to the line and someone passes the ball to him again. Steve takes his place to the side, glaring. Billy shoots and scores. This is child’s play to him.

After practise, the coach corners Steve. “You weren’t up to your standard today.”

“I know,” Steve says. It’s true, he’s not playing as well as usual. He feels like he’s fifteen again, fresh through a growth spurt. He wasn’t used to the sudden length of his limbs, and he didn’t know where to put them. He was clumsy, uncomfortable in his own skin.

Steve is starting to feel like that again now, even though he hasn’t grown that much in months. He blames Billy, that asshole, for taking his place as the king of Hawkins High. Now he doesn’t know where he fits in. He doesn’t fit right, not just in the game, but in life. Being Steve Harrington is like wearing a shirt a size too small. He can wear it, but it’s choking him.

There’s someone at his car when he gets outside. Jonathan Byers. There’s another problem. Another misfit. It’s a sad time indeed, if Steve is identifying with Jonathan Byers.

“Hey,” Jonathan says. “Nancy had to go home. She asked me to give you this.” He holds out a couple of neatly stapled pages. His college application essay. Nancy was helping him with it. There are a load of red marks on it.

Steve grabs it. “Thanks.” Had Jonathan been reading his shitty essay? The thought embarrasses him. He opens the driver’s door and throws the essay into the back. “D’you need a ride home?”

Jonathan shrugs. “Sure.”

It’s awkward being in the car with Jonathan. Steve actually doesn’t mind Jonathan. He’s a bit of an outcast, but so is Steve these days. The awkwardness comes from Nancy. They don’t have anything to talk about between the two of them, except for her. So Steve asks, “How’s Nance?” And Jonathan replies, “She’s good.”

And that’s their conversation.

Jonathan reaches for the radio controls, then pauses, his fingers just brushing the dial. “Do you mind?”

“No, go ahead,” Steve says, glancing at Jonathan then snapping his eyes back to the road.

Jonathan fiddles with the radio for a few seconds. He flips through the channels and Steve hears snippets of songs, interspersed with radio static. Eventually Jonathan settles on a song he likes, and leans back in his seat.

“What’s this?” Steve asks.

“Talking Heads.”

_Cool_, Steve wants to say, but doesn’t. He nods his head in time to the steady drum beat of the song. He doesn’t have to ask the way to Jonathan’s house, he’s been a few times. He drops Nancy off there occasionally. It’s pretty sad, he thinks. He’s made a habit of driving his ex-girlfriend to her new boyfriend’s house.

Nancy’s less an ex-girlfriend, more just a friend, though. He doesn’t like to think of her in girlfriend terms. It’s just another thing that makes him uneasy these days. He can’t remember why they dated in the first place. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

Steve parks out the front of the Byers house. Neither of them say a word. Jonathan opens the door and gets out, and walks across the grass. He turns around on the porch and waves at Steve. Steve takes that as an invitation to leave. He puts the car in reverse and speeds back down the driveway. He leaves Jonathan’s song on. It’s a good one.

The next day between third and fourth period, Steve finds himself walking past Nancy’s locker. It’s out of his way. He doesn’t have any classes in this end of the building, and his locker is in the next corridor across. But he’s bored. At least, that’s what he tells himself. Nancy is there, swapping the books in her arms with others. 

And Jonathan is there too. He’s smiling at her. Steve remembers when that used to be him. _He_ used to smile at Nancy Wheeler in between class. He hasn’t seen Jonathan smile like that before. He’s never seen Jonathan’s teeth before. It’s a weird thought to have. Steve knows it’s shitty, but he resents Jonathan a bit for it. It’s tough to see someone else so happy when Steve feels like shit.

“Steve.” Carol’s voice reaches him as if from far away. “You’re holding up traffic.”

Steve looks behind him. Students are streaming around him. He’s stopped in the middle of the corridor. “Shit,” he mutters, and keeps walking, past Nancy’s locker, right into fourth period Biology.

After almost an hour of trying to wrap his head around the Krebs cycle, he’s not in the mindset for fifth period English. He’s not in the mindset for anything, really. He wanders out into the parking lot, planning on taking a nap in his.

Jonathan Byers is standing near his own car, smoking. He looks kind of like a rock-star, one of those weird British ones. He blows a cloud of smoke into the frigid February air and shakes the hair out of his eyes, shifting his weight so he half leans against, half sits on the boot of his car.

Steve makes the decision there to say something to him. Anything, really. He walks up to Jonathan and says, “Got a spare?”

Jonathan looks taken aback. “Y–yeah,” he stammers, fishing in his pockets for a cigarette. He hands it to Steve.

“Lighter?”

Jonathan tosses it to Steve. He catches it and clicks it on, lights the cigarette, then puts the lighter onto the roof of Jonathan’s car. He brings the cigarette to his lips and inhales. He doesn’t make a habit of smoking, but he’s stolen cigarettes from his dad’s jacket every now and then. He’s experienced enough not to cough and embarrass himself, at least.

“No Nancy?” Steve asks.

Jonathan chuckles. “Nancy, skipping class?”

“Right,” Steve says. 

They stand in silence for a while. Steve rolls the cigarettes between his fingers, staring at Jonathan. Jonathan holds his elegantly. Not like a girl, there’s something strong and very masculine about the way it rests between two fingers, but gentle. Jonathan holds the cigarette like it might fall apart in his hand. Steve’s eyes catch on Jonathan’s knuckles, where they’re marked with small angry scabs.

“You get into a fight?” Steve asks.

Jonathan takes his time answering. He holds the cigarette to his lips and inhales, then blows the smoke out in a steady stream, his chapped lips pursed like he’s kissing someone. “My dad came back to town for a day. Said it was to visit me and my brother, really he just came to fish with his friends. Anyway, he started having a go at my mom for the way she’s raising Will.” Jonathan licks his lips. “He got a hit at me too.”

Jonathan’s a fighter, Steve knows this firsthand. He’s not a jock, doesn’t play any sports and to Steve’s knowledge, he doesn’t work out or anything. But he’s passionate. That’s the best way to describe him. When Jonathan gets angry, he gets real angry. When they fought in the alley behind the movie theatre, Steve wasn’t angry. He was pissed off, sure, but mostly he was just bored. Jonathan was _mad_. Steve was objectively stronger than Jonathan, but Jonathan had something more tucked inside his fists.

“Fuck him,” Steve says. “He’s a dickhead. He deserved it.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan mutters. “Fuck him.” He exhales smoke shakily. “When he left… I thought that would be the end of it. Hoped he wouldn’t come back.”

Steve nods. “Sometimes I wish my dad would up and leave, too.”

“No you don’t,” Jonathan says tersely. He drops his cigarette on the ground, crushes it under his foot. “You don’t.”

He starts to walk back into the school building, his hands thrusted in his pockets, head down. He looks like the Jonathan Byers that Steve remembers from before all of this.

“Jonathan!” Steve calls out.

He turns.

“Need a ride home?”

Steve drives. They’re not going anywhere in particular. The drive home was a pretence. Jonathan knew it. Steve knew it. They’re just two boys, skipping school to be hooligans for the afternoon. Jonathan doesn’t ask to change the radio this time. He just leans over and twiddles the dial until he finds something he likes. His elbow brushes Steve’s as he does so, but that doesn’t matter. Steve ignores it.

After an hour or so of driving, they find themselves at the quarry. Steve gets out of the car first and walks over to the edge of the path, where he can look down fifty feet to the water below. He imagines what it would be like to throw himself off this tiny cliff. Wind rushing through his hair, stomach turning over. Would he be more comfortable in his skin like that, or less?

“Long way down,” Jonathan comments.

“Yeah.” Steve doesn’t know what he’s doing here. Standing at the quarry with Jonathan Byers, in the middle of the day. He bends over and picks up a small rock, then throws it as far as he can into the air. It cuts a clean arc through the air, then lands in the water below them. 

Jonathan copies him. They lock themselves into a competition of sorts, seeing how far they can throw a rock into the air. It’s a stupid game to play, on the cusp of adulthood. Steve wonders if there are any fish in the lake. What are they thinking right now, as rocks rain down onto them?

Steve voices this concern.

Jonathan pauses with his arm behind his head, preparing for another throw. He looks at Steve and chuckles. “They’re just fish, Steve. I don’t think they’re thinking anything.” He throws the rock. It goes further than any of the others.

Steve doesn’t pick up another rock. He just stands there, staring at Jonathan. It’s like he’s seeing him for the first time. There’s something about the way he stands, the distance between his feet and the angle of his shoulders. It’s the way his head naturally rolls down, how he avoids eye-contact and prefers the ground. It’s the gentle yet strong, controlled yet awkward way he moves.

“Do you ever feel uncomfortable in your own skin?” Steve asks.

Jonathan licks his lips. “All the goddamn time.” He launches a rock into the sky, but Steve doesn’t follow its path. He’s figured it out now, at least he thinks he has. He grabs Jonathan’s face and pulls him towards him, and kisses him.

It’s not like kissing a girl. It’s completely different. For one thing, Jonathan smells different. There’s no fruity or floral perfume, just cigarette smoke and something else. It’s not as kind, either. Kind isn’t the right word. It’s stronger. It’s not rough, it’s just more purposeful. Kissing Nancy always felt like an experiment, like something he was trying out. This feels _right_, and he doesn’t have to be apologetic about it.

Steve pulls back and looks at Jonathan. He looks surprised. Not confused. Not angry. Just surprised. Steve feels like his insides have caved in for a moment—_what the fuck, what was I thinking_—but then Jonathan reaches up with his hand, the hand with the split knuckles, and he’s cupping Steve’s cheeks, and he’s kissing him back.

It’s not soft. It’s not sweet. But this is the most right Steve has felt in months. This is what comes naturally. This is what is easy.

When they break away from each other, they stay standing close together for a while. Their faces are barely two inches apart. Steve stares at Jonathan’s eyes, and Jonathan stares back most of the time. Sometimes his eyes flit away nervously, but mostly they keep eye contact. They don’t smile or frown or anything like that. They just look.

“Need a ride home?” Steve asks, and this time, by home he means _my house_.

They can figure things out later. For now, Steve just wants Jonathan close. Being the Steve Harrington that everyone wanted was a shirt a size too small. But this? This fits just right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! i wrote this at 12am with minimal editing/common sense so sorry if it's a little disjointed. please leave kudos and a comment if you enjoyed <33


	2. palm to palm

The next day at school, Steve quietly parks his car in the parking lot and walks into school with Jonathan. It feels like everyone is staring at them, wondering why Steve Harrington drove Jonathan Byers to school. Steve knows that they aren’t, but as he walks down the corridor he feels thousands of eyes on the back of his head. _It’s just paranoia_, he tells himself, but he doesn’t believe it.

He wants to grab himself by the collar of his shirt and shake himself, ask _what were you thinking? _This doesn’t happen in Hawkins. It _can’t _happen in Hawkins. And it can’t happen to Steve, especially not with Jonathan Byers. And Jonathan has a girlfriend. Nancy would be devastated, disgusted, repulsed, infuriated—these words float around in Steve’s head, shooting into him like poisoned darts.

Last night, they sat in Steve’s room. They sat on the floor, their backs against the bed. They weren’t _on _the bed. That’s important to Steve. But they still sat beside each other, sometimes making out, sometimes just listening to music, sometimes talking about stupid things. They broke into Steve’s dad’s wine cabinet and poured themselves generous drinks, again and again. The hours have blurred in Steve’s mind, but he remembers little details.

“How’re you so good at basketball?” Jonathan asked at one point.

Steve smiled. His thoughts didn’t go to _I’m not good at basketball _or _there are people much better than me_. He said, “Big hands. It’s genetic.” He held up his right hand to demonstrate the point.

Jonathan chuckled, like he wasn’t sure if Steve was joking or not. He raised his own hand and placed it against Steve’s to compare. “They’re basically the same size.”

Steve licked his lips, swallowed. He stared at Jonathan, his eyes flitting from eyes to lips to hands to eyes again. “Maybe you’d be good at basketball, too.”

“Maybe,” Jonathan said, and his face was much closer. Palm to palm, tongue to tongue. 

Steve hopes that all the people in the corridor can’t see this memory on his face, written across his palms or sung by his beating heart. He looks over at Jonathan and wonders if he remembers it, too. Steve hopes he does. 

Nancy is already at her locker when they arrive. She looks up and frowns at Jonathan accompanied by Steve. Steve thinks that maybe he should turn around and walk away, but that would be even more suspicious. He smiles at her, and she returns it.

She looks at Jonathan. “Hey,” she says, smiling. She takes his face in her hands and kisses him. He wraps his arms around her and holds her. Steve is jealous. They can do this in the corridor and no one takes a second glance. But if he did the same to Jonathan, people would stare—and worse. 

Nancy and Jonathan break apart. “Where were you last period yesterday?”

Jonathan glances at Steve. “I skipped.”

“Oh.” Nancy picks at the sleeve of her shirt. “With Steve?”

“No,” Jonathan says, and at the same time Steve says, “Yes.”

Nancy raises her eyebrows.

“It wasn’t planned,” Jonathan adds hastily. “We just sort of met at the parking lot. Had a cigarette.”

Nancy seems satisfied by this, and Steve lets out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding. “Wish you’d give it up,” she murmurs, pushing his hair behind his ear. He needs a haircut, Steve thinks. “Makes you smell.”

Jonathan smiles and looks at the ground. His hair falls into his face again.

This is too much for Steve. He mutters an excuse about needing to go to class and gets the hell out of there. His head is spinning. He doesn’t skip any classes today, even though he’s feeling ill and this is the day he probably _should _skip class. He can’t bear the thought that he’ll go outside and be alone, and at the same time he’s scared that he’ll go outside and Jonathan _will _be there. Better not to put himself in that situation at all.

He leaves his third period class to go to the bathroom. He takes a longer walk than normal, going to the bathrooms on the other side of the school rather than the close ones. He needs fresh air. Sitting in a classroom is stifling, but it’s just a few more months and he’s out of here. He takes his time in the bathroom, enjoying stupid little freedoms as much as possible. As he’s washing his hands in the tepid water that comes out of the high school taps, the door opens.

Jonathan walks in and folds his arms. He’s got this stupid smirk on his face, and his hair has fallen forward. “Are you avoiding me?”

Steve shakes his hands, flicking water into the sink. “No.”

“Feels like it.” Jonathan isn’t smirking now. He steps closer, puts his hand on the back of Steve’s head, kisses him. It’s exactly how Nancy was with him. Steve turns his head quickly, ripping his lips away from Jonathan.

Jonathan steps back. He looks hurt, and runs a hand through his hair so it’s off his face. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Steve looks down at the sink, tapping his fingers against the ceramic. “It’s just—Nancy.”

“I love her,” Jonathan says. “But I don’t… I can’t…”

Steve nods. He knows. He dated Nancy Wheeler once, too. They were happy for a while. But Steve was playing a role. When he was born, he was given a script and casted as king, and told to act. He was a good actor. But he couldn’t pretend forever. Nancy was right. It was all bullshit.

“You’ve got to tell her.”

Jonathan winces.

“Maybe not tell her,” Steve says. He knows he’s not about to tell anyone about what’s going on between him and Jonathan. He can’t expect Jonathan to do the same, especially not to his girlfriend. “But we can’t do _this _while you’re with her. It’s not fair.”

Jonathan steps closer again. “What is _this_?”

Steve’s breath hitches in his throat. “I don’t know.”

Jonathan looks over Steve’s face and nods. “I’m going to break up with her tonight.”

“Okay. Good.”

“Good.”

Steve’s back is against the wall. Jonathan’s hand is behind his head, cushioning it against the cold hard tiles. They kiss again. It’s nice.

The door opens and Jonathan springs away, grabbing his bag that he dropped in the corner and shuffling past Billy Hargrove, who has just entered. Steve watches Jonathan wrench the door open again and disappear into the hallway. The door swings shut. Steve looks at Billy.

Billy has an odd expression on his face. It’s repulsion, but also excitement. There’s a dangerous glimmer in his eyes. His face breaks into a smile, almost a laugh. _He knows_, Steve thinks. _He saw it, and he knows._

“Fuck off, Hargrove,” Steve bites out, storming out of the bathroom and into the hallway. He goes into an empty classroom and sits down and shakes. His breath is ragged and he can’t think anything except _my life is over._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading, please leave kudos and a comment if you have time! alternatively, say hello to me on tumblr @inhobbok.  
this was supposed to be one longg chapter but i decided to cut it in half. i feel like it makes more sense that way (also i was reallyyyy excited to post this!!) so this fic is 3 chapters in total now, not 2.  
final chapter should be up by friday :)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! i wrote this at 12am with minimal editing/common sense so sorry if it's a little disjointed. please leave kudos and a comment if you enjoyed <33


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